Payments

LONDON -- Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the powerful former ambassador to the United States who has been one of the Bush administration's strongest allies in the Middle East, was publicly linked to a widening corruption scandal yesterday with reports that a British aerospace company secretly paid up to $2 billion into bank accounts at the Saudi embassy in Washington. The new allegations point directly at Bandar, son of the Saudi crown prince and a man who has been a key ally for both the current President Bush and his father.

BEIJING -- In a sign that Sino-U.S. relations are moving beyond the deep freeze that set in after NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, both sides agreed yesterday that the U.S. will pay $4.5 million to the injured and the families of those who died in the May attack.U.S. officials emphasized that the payments -- which the Chinese government will distribute -- are "humanitarian" in nature in hopes that they will not provide a legal precedent for future claims resulting from damage during war."

W. R. Grace & Co. said yesterday that it would recover $3.7 million from an insurance company for excess payments and benefits that were paid to two former chief executives, who themselves disagreed over the disclosure of such payments.Charles P. Valdes, chairman of the investment committee of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers, said the recovery was a victory for Grace shareholders like Calpers, which owned 1.4 percent of Grace and joined in lawsuits over the payments in 1996.

Lawmakers in Annapolis are eyeing legislation sought by Realtors to lower Maryland's high real estate closing costs. But the effort faces stiff opposition from bankers and local officials, who stand to lose millions of dollars.A bill is pending before the House of Delegates that would require all Maryland property owners to pay their real estate taxes in semiannual installments, ending the current practice of collecting the taxes annually. A similar bill is before a Senate committee.House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. touted the legislation yesterday as "a solution to Maryland's very high closing costs" and the equivalent of a tax refund for hundreds of thousands of homeowners.

Despite posting a hefty net operating loss in 1998, the state Injured Workers Insurance Fund has handed out a new round of bonuses for last year's performance to dozens of its top employees ranging to more than 14 percent.The bonuses, according to records in the state Office of the Comptroller, include a $20,962, or 14.3 percent payment, to IWIF president Paul M. Rose, whose annual salary is $147,000.Other executives at IWIF got bonus payments ranging from 7.67 percent for vice presidents including Donna C. Wilson to 10.78 percent for the chief operating officer, Doreen Horvath.

I have a platinum MasterCard. I went over my credit limit because the card issuer said it did not receive my last payment in time to be posted. I use a postage meter, and the payment was sent to the company two weeks before the due date, for an amount that was triple the minimum payment.The company claims it did not receive my payment until a week after the due date. It slapped me with an "over credit limit fee" of $125, plus a late fee. When I called, the phone representative said that the company does not consider postmarks on envelopes, even if registered, as the date payments were received.

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the Los Angeles Times, which was published Wednesday.AMERICA'S teaching hospitals are acclaimed for their use of advanced medicine to save patients. In August, for instance, doctors at Children's Hospital Los Angeles successfully labored around the clock on two young boys -- one of them critically wounded -- who were shot at a Granada Hills Jewish center.Acclaim won't pay doctors or their instructors, however, and teaching hospitals are major targets this year for the $60 billion that Congress plans to cut from Medicare's hospital payments over four years under the 1997 Balanced Budget Act.Some $14 billion in cuts are slated to come out of the Medicare dollars the government now sends to teaching hospitals.

Unsuccessful state Senate candidate Robert Fulton Dashiell has filed two overdue campaign finance reports listing 83 people who got $125 each for election-day campaign work -- payments that are under investigation by Maryland's prosecutor.The reports filed by Dashiell, a member of the Baltimore County school board, paint a picture of a campaign built on paid staff and workers rather than on volunteers, and funded largely by the candidate himself.But Dashiell -- an attorney who owes $950 in late fees on four campaign reports -- said yesterday that he has not seen the latest report, signed by campaign treasurer Audrey Quarles.

Union workers at both Bethlehem Steel Corp. and USX-U.S. Steel Corp. have approved new five-year contracts with the two companies, the United Steelworkers of America union said late yesterday.The deal covers unionized workers at Bethlehem Steel's local Sparrows Point Division."Our members have done more than their share to make sure the American steel industry is the most productive in the world," said George Becker, president of the 750,000-member Steelworkers union. "These agreements will make sure they and their families are rewarded with considerably more security in return for their hard work."

WASHINGTON -- The Greek government is investigating Litton Industries Inc. to determine whether the U.S. defense contractor made illegal payments to win Greek defense contracts, Greek Embassy officials said yesterday.Greece will look at whether Litton broke any laws when it paid $12 million in commissions to consultants regarding about $150 million in sales of F-16 fighter-jet equipment to the Greek government in 1993, said Achilles Paparsenos, a spokesman for the Greek Embassy. He didn't identify the consultants.

A former prison guard and her incarcerated lover, a Black Guerrilla Family gang member, pleaded guilty Monday to extorting thousands of dollars from prisoners and their relatives, often using contraband cell phones to call the victims from jail. According to their plea agreements, Fonda Deneen White and Jeffrey Fowlkes, both 41, made dozens of threatening calls to an inmate's mother in 2007, "demanding money in exchange for her son's safety." The mother sent 27 payments totaling more than $7,000 before the FBI stepped in. The agency's investigation revealed that White had deposited into her bank account roughly 180 other prisoner payments beginning in October 2005, shortly after she was fired for having an "inappropriate relationship" with an inmate.

There is no leniency. Credit card companies and banks are worried that people are drowning in debt and will fall behind on payments. With home values declining and banks wary of handing out loans, outlets for escaping overwhelming debt are limited. Consumers are finding themselves caught. Card companies are getting tougher, sometimes canceling unused cards or raising rates seemingly for no good reason. And 30 percent of banks said in a recent Federal Reserve survey that they had tightened standards on consumer loans.

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the U.S. Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received. The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the U.S. military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash.

The first tax rebates began landing in taxpayers' bank accounts ahead of schedule yesterday, kicking off a $168 billion stimulus program to put cash in consumers' pockets and jolt the stalling economy. Sales-hungry retailers are jostling to capture a share, launching promotions to entice Americans to spend the money in their stores rather than using it to pay bills or stashing it away. Home Depot is promoting energy-efficient lights and appliances. Sears is kicking in an additional 10 percent for shoppers who put the entire amount into gift cards.

Baltimore County : Ruxton Police identify man killed in JFX crash A Baltimore County man who was killed Saturday evening on the Jones Falls Expressway in Ruxton has been identified as Brian Joseph Granofsky, 49, of Parkton, according to police. State police at the Golden Ring barracks said Granofsky was driving a 2001 Acura north on the JFX between Northern Parkway and Ruxton Road about 6:30 p.m. when he crashed into the rear of a 1996 Volvo. Police said the Acura veered to the left, collided with a median barrier, then traveled across all four northbound lanes before striking a guardrail.

It has become a lot tougher for first-time homebuyers to secure a mortgage these days. With the mortgage industry rocked by soaring delinquency and foreclosure rates, particularly in the subprime loans made to people with weaker credit, lenders have become much stricter about doling out the dough. They have tightened their credit standards, requiring higher down payments, better credit scores and more documentation on income and assets. These higher hurdles hit first-time homebuyers particularly hard, experts say. The buyers often struggle to accumulate a down payment.

Maryland's insurance commissioner ordered a hearing yesterday to determine whether the former chief executive of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield should be allowed to receive a $17.65 million retirement and severance package from the health insurer. William L. Jews left his post a year ago in what CareFirst's board chairman, Michael R. Merson, described as "a mutual decision." Merson said at the time that Jews would receive "substantial" payments after his departure, but the amount hadn't been made public until the insurance commissioner specified it in his order yesterday.

More than 65 homeowners in Baltimore City and Frederick County who were facing the possibility of having to pay their property tax bill twice can breathe easy. Both jurisdictions received certified checks yesterday from American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., whose original checks bounced. It paid all of the $63,500 owed on 55 properties in the city. In Frederick County, it paid for 11 of the 12 affected homeowners - almost all of the $60,000 owed. Baltimore County said it has not received certified payment for 21 properties for which American Home Mortgage sent bad checks in late July.

Adjustable rate mortgages have always meant that homeowners are taking a chance that payments could fluctuate along with interest rates, but in recent years some loans have been structured to virtually guarantee that rates go up - and stay up. While many homeowners are feeling the pinch of rates resetting on so-called ARMs, some are getting crushed by what housing advocates call "strangulation ARMs" that continue to reset as often as every six months....

The more we study payments being made, the more we begin to see the unbelievable phenomena of literally sending farm bill payments to people who live in Manhattan and San Francisco. ... I mean, they may own land, but they're really pretty disconnected from farming." - MIKE JOHANNS, U.S. secretary of agriculture, lamenting the subsidies the government pays to wealthy landowners who do little or no farming